Charlie Rose Wonders Whether “The President is Not So Good at Foreign Policy”

Sep 12, 2013

RUSH: I shared with you my disgust and outrage over being lectured to by Vladimir Putin in the New York Times, and I didn’t get into nearly the whole piece. I just focused on American exceptionalism. But you want to know what the left’s reaction to the Putin column in the New York Times is? Oh, you gotta hear this. Yeah, you’re gonna laugh. What do you think the left’s reaction to Putin’s piece is?

Oh, no. They’re not mad. They’re not mad. They’re saying, “We had this coming, and now we know what it’s like to live in other countries and be lectured to by the United States.” This is the theme running on MSNBC. We had it coming. This is what happens when we get too big for the world’s britches, and now we know what it’s like to be in other Podunk countries being lectured to.

So, you see, in their view the United States doesn’t liberate people. The United States dissents protect and defend freedom around the world. The United States is the problem of the world. We’re the oppresses. We run around and force our way. We impose freedom on people. And now we’ve got a taste of our own medicine. And they’re eating it up. They’re loving it. They don’t look at it as a diss on Obama. On the politics side, they think it’s deft politics, that Obama has moved a very no-win situation off to Putin. They think Obama’s pulled a masterful political stroke here by moving this off to Putin.

And then, on the other side of it, they’re out there going, “Nah-nah-nah-nah. How’s it feel? How’s it feel? This is what it’s like to be in other countries when the US comes around. This is what it’s like to be lectured to by United States in other parts of the world.” I don’t know that senior Democrats understand that he’s been — well, let’s go to the audio sound bites. I think they do. I think there are pockets of Democrats and media people who understand Obama’s been totally played here. And he has been, Obama and John Kerry have been toyed with. I don’t think they know it, but I think other Democrats do, because they have been. It’s embarrassing.

For Vladimir Putin to be asserting worldwide moral authority over the United States and our president, it’s unprecedented. He’s doing it with credibility, by the way. That’s what makes it unprecedented. You’ve had a lot of foreign leaders in the past huff and puff about the US, but Putin, just take yourself out of it in any emotional sense, and it’s a masterful Putin play. He took a John Kerry gaffe. He has made policy out of it. He now has control of the chemical weapons in Syria. He’s determining how they’re gonna be inspected or not. He’s determining whether there’s gonna be a use-of-force authorization in the United States Congress, Vladimir Putin is!

Vladimir Putin’s in charge of all this, not Barack Obama. Vladimir Putin has saved Bashar Assad’s job, maybe his life, and he saved the Assad regime, and he saved Assad’s chemical weapons, and then he lectures the United States for being a bunch of bumbling fools and says (imitation), “You guys better stop thinking of yourselves as special because you’re not. You’re run-of-the-mill average. We can have our way with you any time we want.” And meanwhile Obama’s running around thinking how they played Putin, they sloughed all this off on Putin because what it means is Obama never really wanted to do it in the first place. He just did this to distract everybody’s attention from Obamacare, the defund effort, from the economy.

All Syria was for Obama was a diversion, a way to distract people’s attention. He didn’t want a strike. He didn’t want to do anything, just like he didn’t want to do anything in Benghazi. And the left doesn’t care about that, Snerdley. The left does not care that four Americans are dead in Benghazi. They don’t care. What they care about is whether or not Obama ends up harmed or not by it. And in this case, Obama really didn’t want this, and now they’re thinking in the White House that Putin owns it, and it’s his to make or break, and they think they’ve made a masterful political move. But, to answer your question, let’s go to the audio sound bites. Last night on PBS and Charlie Rose, during a discussion about Obama’s evolving policy on Syria.

ROSE: Two questions about this I’m fascinated by in terms of whether there’s a developing idea that the president’s not so good at foreign policy, number one. And number two, whether this whole Syrian crisis will just take more air out of whatever leverage he has for the future of his administration.

RUSH: I think there’s your answer, Mr. Snerdley. Charlie Rose knows. But Charlie’s known since before the election of 2008 that Obama wasn’t — (interruption) well, if you use the Bay of Pigs, I mean, for crying out loud, Snerdley, it’s the 1950s. You think the TMZ crowd knows the Bay of Pigs? They’re actually thinking it’s a livestock farm. They don’t know what it is. But here’s Charlie Rose, fascinated here, developing idea, the president not so good at foreign policy, and whether this whole Syrian crisis will just take more air out of whatever leverage he has for the future of his administration. And Charlie, by the way, was on CBS This Morning, so he survived this.

He was on TV. He was still smiling today, so apparently he’s still breathing after having on PBS last night questioned whether or not Obama’s any good at foreign policy. It reminds me of 9/11, Bush flying around. He wanted to go back to Washington immediately, and the handlers said, “No, no, no, you’re not going there ’til we get a handle on what happened.” Peter Jennings on World News Tonight on ABC, “Some presidents are just better at this than others.” He was talking about how wonderful Bill Clinton was in a crisis, and everybody was lamenting that this didn’t happen when Clinton was president ’cause it’s such a great opportunity to be great. Clinton never had a great opportunity like 9/11. They’re all ticked off that it happened for Bush. It’s the way they looked at it.

Okay, so here’s Charlie. “Ah, developing idea here, president not so good at foreign policy.” He was talking to John Dickerson, a CBS News political director on his show, and here’s what he said.

DICKERSON: Some would say it’s a complex ugly world and this goes back to the red line. He’s not meaning red line if we just pay close attention. He’s got a sense here and the complexity of the world is what’s the problem, not his talent for handling this. On the domestic front Democrats certainly would argue Republicans weren’t willing to work with him anyway. How does this change that dynamic? I’m not sure it changes it a whole lot because the dynamic was pretty darn bad to begin with.

RUSH: Okay. So the political director at CBS, John Dickerson: It’s not Obama’s fault. The world is just too complex. Wait a minute. I thought Obama was the smartest man in the world. I thought Obama was capable of anything. I thought that Obama was the Master of the Universe. I’m just remembering what I was told about Obama in 2007 and 2008, that Obama was gonna make all this stuff stop. There wasn’t gonna be any animosity at the United States. There wasn’t gonna be any more anger at the US. There wasn’t gonna be any more disrespectful attitudes about the United States. We’re gonna be loved, adored, respected, all of this kind of stuff, and now all of a sudden, Syria, a country that really doesn’t have any relationship to us in terms of national security, John Dickerson says (paraphrasing), “Well, yeah, it’s a complex, ugly world. Yeah, complexity of the world is what the problem is, Charlie, not Obama’s lack of talent for handling it.”

Well, let’s go back to the archives, the Grooveyard of Forgotten Hits. This is a montage. This is Charlie Rose and Tom Brokaw on October 30th of 2008 just before the presidential election in 2008. Both of these guys, Charlie Rose, who you just heard say it might mean that Obama’s not good at foreign policy, and Brokaw, both were on the Obama bandwagon, and they were advocating his election. They were supporting his election. They were just short of fundraising and showing up at rallies. But yet one week before the election on Charlie’s show, Brokaw and Charlie had this little conversation.

ROSE: I don’t know what Barack Obama’s worldview is.

BROKAW: No, I don’t, either.

ROSE: I don’t know how he really sees where China is.

BROKAW: We don’t know a lot about Barack Obama and the universe of his thinking about foreign policy.

ROSE: I don’t really know. And do we know anything about the people who are advising him?

BROKAW: Yeah, it’s an interesting question.

ROSE: He is principally known through his autobiography and through very aspirational (sic) speeches.

BROKAW: Two of them. I don’t know what books he’s read.

ROSE: What do we know about the heroes of Barack Obama?

BROKAW: There’s a lot about him we don’t know.

RUSH: These guys, a week before the election, and telling us at the same time, “Well, I don’t know anything about this guy,” whether he’s good or not, qualified or not. Still gotta vote for him ’cause he’s black, president, first one. The first black president’s why we gotta vote for him. But he may not know what he’s doing. It doesn’t matter. We know that. We don’t know what he’s read. We don’t know if he knows where China is, what he thinks of China. We don’t know who his advisers are, don’t know anything about him. But he’s great, boy, he’s really the best thing we’ve ever had happen to us. Really great, great. Don’t know anything about him. He’s just the best.

Piers Morgan last night on CNN, Piers Morgan still alive. He was speaking with Dana Bash, the chief correspondent of Congress for CNN, and he said, “Dana, this is a bit of a mess, isn’t it, for President Obama? Now you have Putin taking over the New York Times op-ed pages to give his latest mission statement to the American people?”

BASH: It is really remarkable. Just when you think the story can’t change any more and get any more, frankly, sometimes weird, it has.

MORGAN: This is almost bordering on arrogance, is the way Putin seems to read this, saying nothing exceptional about it at all and a country shouldn’t be exceptional like that. It’s a very strange piece when you read it from start to finish, but you can’t help thinking that what it shows the American people is that the man calling the shots here is not their president, but it’s the Russian leader.

BASH: That’s exactly right.

RUSH: Does this answer your question, Mr. Snerdley? They kinda get it here in the media enclaves, the media salons, and the cloakrooms of the Democrat Party, they kinda get it here that Putin’s really running the show. (interruption) How they gonna cover to him? Ah, this will be here and gone by tonight, tomorrow, not any big deal. They’re just getting it out there.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: The Associated Press has a story: “Kerry Rejects Assad’s Proposed Timeline for Submitting Chemical Weapons Data.” Assad said he wanted to start the process in 30 days, and Kerry says that’s not soon enough. Now, it is reported that the Syrians have over 1,000 tons of conventional weapons in over 50 different places, and they’re in the middle of a civil war, and Kerry’s demanding… You always have to think a step or two ahead. Okay, we’ve got the news that Putin’s running the show.

Putin writes an op-ed the New York Times. Putin accepted Kerry’s gaffe to remove the chemical weapons from Syria and leave Assad in power, and Assad then free to resume bombing the rebels, which is all happening. I think… Look, I don’t want to sound like I’m smiling or laughing here. But I think John Kerry making demands right now is laughable, and it’s indicative of the fact that Kerry doesn’t have the slightest idea what’s happened here.

What he wants or what Obama wants is now irrelevant. Putin is running the show and the White House has even said so. The White House has now said, “Putin owns this.” They’re happy to have, ostensibly, handed this off to Putin. So here’s Kerry rejecting Assad’s proposed timeline, and Putin is going to determine what happens. Putin determined whether or not there was a congressional vote on the authorization of use-of-force resolution, when you get right down to it!

Putin did.

So, “Kerry Rejects Assad’s Proposed Timeline…” but Putin is gonna determine this. Putin’s gonna determine when those weapons are removed, if they’re removed, and Putin’s gonna determine where those weapons go, and there’s John Kerry. He’s doing his Tarzan impersonation out there, beating his chest, “Aaaaaaaaaaaah,” and swinging on some vines in the jungle. Not knowing that there’s Mazola all over the vine, and he’s about to slip into alligator-infested swamps.

It’s the arrogance and conceit of these people that makes us vulnerable, ’cause they don’t have the slightest idea. They’re sit there and tell themselves they’re outsmarting Putin, and it’s the other way around. They don’t have the humility to understand what’s happening. Anyway, you’ll see. Putin’s already a couple steps ahead of us. We just don’t know what they are now, but we will, and you’ll remember me saying this. So you just keep a sharp eye out.